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Key topics include designing teams, managing teams, managing conflict, group dynamics, project management, product development, interdepartmental relations, and organizational change. MediSys, a U.S.-based medical equipment maker, has been developing IntensCare, a new medical system for monitoring intensive-care patients. MediSys has invested heavily in IntensCare, which is eagerly awaited by the market. The product development team, representing several functional areas of the company, has been working on the product for six months but is now running into significant problems with the product design, the schedule, and their own group dynamics. Recently, pressure increased when they learned that two more powerful competitors had begun work on their own products for this market. Several team members are concerned about meeting the team's targets. Struggling especially hard to overcome the various problems is the marketing manager who has profit-and-loss responsibility for IntensCare.

learning objective:

1. Examine the challenges of leading and working in cross-functional teams of professionals. 2. Investigate issues regarding the design, establishment, and management of teams to produce the greatest possible chance of success. 3. Explore ways in which team participants can directly influence their peers and the team's work, both positively and negatively. 4. Examine effective and ineffective ways to resolve conflict and disagreements in a team setting.

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Ken Winston, the regional sales manager at a securities brokerage firm, has reorganized his generalist salespeople into "Key Account Teams" (KAT), to increase sales of specialized, higher-margin fixed income products. Winston is also implementing a new corporate performance management system. To help improve coordination between sales and marketing, Winston must solicit feedback from marketing staff on how responsive his salespeople are to marketing's directives. The marketing group has information on product costs that allow it to forecast product profitability, and by persuading the sales force to focus on those products the marketers can improve firm-wide margins. The KAT model, implemented six months earlier, has challenged the core internal values of the organization - such as a salesperson's control of his or her customer base and the appropriateness of product specialization. However, the long-term test of the new organizational structure will be its alignment with external changes in the securities industry: how securities are bought and sold and the types of new products flooding the market.

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Chronicles the acquisition of a South American enterprise resource planning software solutions company by an aggressive private equity firm. Offers discussion of decision points at crucial stages over the entire process--from negotiation to due diligence to closure. To use in executive and graduate-level courses on international mergers and acquisitions and negotiations as well as to focus on the complex interpersonal relationships and conflicts that emerge during the process.

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Chronicles the launch of a Total Quality Management (TQM) program in Gillette Argentina. The case protagonist credits the initiative with a 40% benefit in business while recognizing that its success was heavily dependent on the effects of teamwork and customer focus. Now he is faced with how to increase market share elsewhere on the continent and preserve it in Argentina. The only real question now is how to expand the same TQM programs elsewhere. To use in undergraduate, graduate, and executive programs on human resources management, team dynamics and design, and implementation of quality programs.

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This case examines the organizational changes and human resource strategies implemented to create an entrepreneurial culture within the formerly state-owned oil company. After a local entrepreneur radically downsized and reorganized the company, YPF was successfully taken public in 1993. But in a country where the economy had been closed for many decades and state-owned institutions had become bloated and highly bureaucratic, changing the mindset and behavior of the workforce to turn it into a competitive player in the world economy was not automatic. It required major redesign of organizational systems, like recruiting, training, and performance management. The case describes the changes introduced by a new vice president of human resources and offers early reaction to those changes.

learning objective:

To illustrate the complex and interacting set of organizational changes needed to create a high-performance culture, especially in a bureaucratic company in an emerging economy.

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Set in Venezuela in 1997, this case describes the massive change effort and leadership required to transform the state-owned oil company from a bureaucratic behemoth into a surefooted competitor in the global marketplace. Even before 1994, when he was appointed by Venezuela's president to lead the company, Luis Giusti was actively creating an agenda for change, as he was building a team and a network of relationships. By mid-1997, he had been successful in radically reshaping national policy, forging alliances with major world companies, and creating significant momentum for internal change. The case chronicles these activities and asks the question, "Where does he go from here?"

learning objective:

To examine change efforts and leadership in a tightly constrained environment and how the political environment shapes the context in which business leaders outside the United States must act.

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In the first 18 months after Diana Mondino and Viviana Zocco had sold their credit rating firm to Standard & Poor's (S&P), business had soared. The young entrepreneurs had not only received a decent sum for their company, they had also received considerable support to grow their business and their own talents. All of the analysts, including the two managing directors, were participating regularly in S&P's highly regarded educational programs. Furthermore, their experience in rating committees with analysts from around the world was broadening them immeasurably. On balance, the acquisition had worked out well. However, the economic situation of the last three months was taking its toll. The workload had increased as more companies faced difficulty and needed reassessment. The unpleasant work of downgrading a company inevitably increased in times like these as well. Furthermore, the major market for ratings, the industrial sector, was maturing. To continue to grow the business would now require extensive education of prospective clients in new markets like insurance and managed funds. As Mondino and Zocco discussed their own expectations for the coming year, they wondered whether this might not be the time to exit the company they had built.

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